Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQXE81BYDD9J7EV6PPA94C

The rain had started just after eight, a thin, needling drizzle that made the streets outside The Raven’s Nest glisten like something half-remembered. From behind the bar, Aurora watched it smear the green neon sign into an emerald blur against the wet black of Soho. Silas had switched off the music half an hour ago. Monday nights didn’t earn it. Three regulars nursed the last of their pints under the wall of old maps, silhouettes bent together like conspirators. In the far corner, by the black-and-white photographs of men in too-big suits and women with victory rolls, a couple argued quietly over whose turn it was to walk the dog in the morning. Aurora liked Mondays. The city felt slowed down, less teeth bared. You could hear yourself think if you were foolish enough to try. She rinsed a glass and set it, still shining with water, upside down on the rack. Her wrist ached in the damp, the small crescent of scar tissue on her left hand prickling the way it always did when the weather turned. She flexed her fingers until it eased. Silas leaned on his good leg at the far end of the bar, reading the paper like something out of another decade. The grey in his auburn hair caught the amber of the hanging lights. His silver signet ring flashed as he turned a page. “Don’t look so pensive, Carter,” he said without glancing up. “You’ll scare away the last of my customers.” “Thought you liked an empty house,” she said. He made a small sound, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. “There’s empty, and then there’s bankrupt. Even I can tell the difference.” The door opened then with a gust of wet wind and a rush of outside noise—tyres on slick asphalt, someone shouting for a cab, a faint siren like an old memory. The regulars looked up. Aurora’s hand went automatically for the clean glasses, her body already moving into the small choreography she barely thought about anymore. Three people came in together, the kind of office trio that drifted into Soho on a Monday when the week had already gone wrong: one man in a navy suit, tie loosened; a woman in a pencil skirt and heels holding her folder like she didn’t trust the coat hooks; another woman, shorter, with a laptop bag slung over one shoulder and rain in her hair. They shook the wet from their coats, talking over one another in that hurried, self-important way people had when they’d stayed late at work and wanted the world to know it. The green neon washed their faces a muted, otherworldly colour. Aurora reached for the spirit bottles without looking at them directly. She’d got good at seeing people without really seeing them. It was a useful trick. “What can I get you?” she asked as they reached the bar, the words rolling out smooth as muscle memory. The man ordered first, some IPA he’d probably read about in a lifestyle column. The taller woman followed with a large glass of red, “house is fine”. Aurora nodded, turned to the tap, the shelf. Her fingers moved before her mind did. “And for you?” she said, already halfway through the question, when the shortest of them—the one towelling rain off her fringe with her fingers—looked up and met her eyes. For a second the world pulled itself taut, as if someone had drawn every line of it too tight. The bar, the maps, the neon—everything receded, went out of focus. The woman had cut her hair. That was the first thing Aurora’s mind latched onto. Eva had always worn it long, a dark rope down her back, something to hide behind. Now it was blunt to the jaw, straightened into obedience. The second thing was the suit: not the off-the-peg polyester of their fathers on parents’ evenings, but sharp, expensive tailoring that sat on her like it had been made for the bones it covered. A thin gold band gleamed on her left hand when she gripped the edge of the bar. Her eyes were the same, though. Brown, watchful, too quick. Aurora felt something old and brittle in her chest give way. “Laila?” Eva said. The sound of the name was soft and disbelieving, carrying across the bar like it had been smuggled through years. Aurora hadn’t heard it spoken in a long time, not like that. Nobody calls me that anymore, her brain supplied. Her mouth, unhelpfully, said nothing. Silas looked up finally, his hazel gaze taking in Eva’s face, the shock on Aurora’s, the sudden quiet. He folded the newspaper in one careful motion, that ring flashing again. “Carter?” he said, a question tucked into the syllables. Aurora blinked once, the moment shuddering, reforming. “Sorry,” she said to the group as a whole, or maybe to the air. “I just— What did you want?” Eva laughed, a short, breathless sound. “God. It is you.” She sounded older. Of course she did. They both were. There was a roughness under her words as if she’d been shouting at some point earlier in the evening, in a meeting or on the phone. “What are you doing here?” Eva said, then, glancing at the bar, the ceiling, the maps, like the place might answer for her. “What does anyone do in a bar?” Aurora said. Her voice came out cooler than she felt. “I work.” The colleague in the navy suit shifted, sensing a story he wasn’t party to. “You two know each other?” he asked, aiming it at Eva. Eva didn’t take her eyes off Aurora. “We grew up together,” she said. “In Cardiff.” The word sounded strange stuck to her London cadence. “Childhood friends,” the other woman in the pencil skirt added, as if that clarified something. She’d already positioned herself as the one who read social cues quickly. “Right,” Aurora said. “So. Beer, wine…” Her fingers tightened around the bar tap. Someone else might have insisted it was impossible, the odds too slim. But London did that. It compressed lives, folded entire histories into the same square mile. Silas cleared his throat quietly. “Why don’t you lot grab a table,” he suggested to the trio, that easy authority in his voice softening the edge. “I’ll bring your drinks over. My staff seem to be suffering a temporary… malfunction.” Aurora shot him a look. He met it levelly, his eyes saying: breathe. “Okay,” the navy suit said, still half-rubbernecking the exchange. “End by the wall? Less draft?” He herded his companions towards a table under the largest of the maps, an old, yellowing chart of Europe with borders that no longer existed. Eva hesitated. “Laila—sorry, Aurora, right? Is that what you go by now?” “Rory,” Aurora said. It felt like putting on a jacket that fit better. “Everyone calls me Rory.” “Rory,” Eva repeated quietly, turning the syllables over. “Can we… do you have five minutes?” Silas answered for her. “She does,” he said. “She’s on till close, but a staff break is a sacred thing.” He slid off his stool, his slight limp evident for a moment before he masked it with that habitual economy of motion. “I’ve got the drinks. Go smoke or brood in the corner or whatever it is twenty-somethings do when they’re not on their phones.” “I’m not—” Aurora started, then gave up. Si’s age jokes were reflexive, almost comforting. She untied the bar apron, hung it on the hook, wiped her palms on her jeans for no reason other than nerves. Eva had gone to stand by the small table near the window, the one that wobbled unless you propped a beer mat under its leg. Outside, the rain traced diagonal lines down the glass, turning the streetlights into blurred coins. Aurora crossed the sticky floorboards, conscious of the regulars watching out of the corners of their eye. London was big, but The Raven’s Nest was a village; dramas that unfolded within its walls had a way of rippling. Up close, Eva smelled faintly of some clean, expensive perfume. There were faint stress lines at the corners of her mouth that hadn’t been there at twenty-two. Or maybe Aurora just hadn’t noticed them back then, too wrapped up in her own. “You work here,” Eva said, not quite a question. “I live upstairs,” Aurora replied, because it covered more ground. “Silas—” She nodded towards the bar, where he was pouring the IPA with professional indifference. “—gave me the flat when I moved. Needed a barback. It worked out.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. “God,” Eva murmured. “I had no idea. I… I mean, of course I didn’t, we haven’t…” She trailed off, words collapsing under the weight of all the ones they hadn’t said. “How long has it been?” Aurora asked. It surprised her that she didn’t know, not precisely. It felt like both yesterday and another life. “Five years,” Eva said after a moment that felt considered. “Almost. Since just after—since you left the house.” She swallowed. “Since you left my flat.” That last word held a hairline crack of something—accusation, apology, Aurora couldn’t tell. The memories came in sharp, mismatched flashes: the stale smell of Eva’s old Finsbury Park place, the piles of casebooks and laundry, pizza boxes stacked like a skyline. Aurora arriving with one rucksack and a bruise she wouldn’t let Eva see. Eva saying, “Stay as long as you need,” in a voice so earnest it hurt. The chipped mug that said WORLD’S OKAYEST LAWYER that had made them both laugh so hard they cried. “You went quiet,” Eva said now, tugging her sleeve down, covering the bracelet on her wrist. “You just… disappeared.” “I texted,” Aurora said. She hadn’t meant to. The words slipped out, small, flat. “You weren’t exactly… responsive.” Eva’s eyes flicked up to her face, sharp. “I was in the middle of bar finals, Lail—Rory. I was sleeping three hours a night. When you left you didn’t tell me where you were going. I came home and your stuff was gone.” There it was—that old hurt, raw again under the polished exterior. Aurora felt herself starting to do what she always did, running over the scene, checking angles, assuming blame. She stopped. “I left a note,” she said. “On the fridge.” Eva let out a short, incredulous breath. “The takeaway menu mountain? Come on.” Aurora almost smiled despite herself. “You loved the chaos.” “In theory.” Eva pressed her fingers against the wobbling table to still it. “Look, I… I’m not here to re-litigate that.” The choice of verb was automatic, then she winced at herself. “Sorry. Occupational hazard.” “What are you now?” Aurora asked, glancing pointedly at the suit. “Queen’s Counsel at twenty-five?” “Ha. I wish. Junior associate at Hargreaves & Flint. Corporate. Mergers, acquisitions, that kind of thing.” Eva grimaced. “Soul-sucking stuff, really. How about you? You bartend?” “And deliveries for Mrs Cheung’s lot round the corner. Golden Empress. You’ve probably seen the scooters.” Eva’s eyes widened. “You do that in this weather?” She looked towards the rain as if it were something personal. “Don’t you ever— I mean, is it safe? After… everything?” There it was, laced into the air between them: everything. The years with Evan. The way Aurora’s left wrist still twinged when she thought about the night with the plate and the doorframe and the shouted apologies that came too late. “It’s fine,” Aurora said. “I’m fine.” “You always say that,” Eva murmured, so quietly Aurora almost missed it. “You did. Back then.” The rain slackened. Outside, a taxi hissed past, its headlights sliding briefly over Eva’s profile, picking out the tiredness under her eyes. “You look different,” Aurora said, and saw the way Eva straightened, a reflex as if reading that as judgement. “Not bad different,” Aurora added quickly. “Just… grown. Your hair. The suit. The ring.” Eva’s hand went instinctively to the band. “Right. Yeah. I— I got married.” “That explains it,” Aurora said, a little too lightly. “The ring, not the suit.” “His name’s Dan. He’s in entertainment law, which sounds much more glamorous than it is.” Eva smiled, the expression brief, real. “We’ve been married a year. Together… four? We met at some networking thing I almost didn’t go to because I was supposed to be helping you move your stuff out of Evan’s and then you…” She stopped, biting the inside of her cheek. “I changed my mind,” Aurora finished for her. The night came back in that queasy rush: the way she’d stood in her kitchen, Evan’s voice bouncing off the cabinets, the taste of copper and humiliation. The phone number on a scrap of paper. Pressing call, then ending it without speaking. “Yeah,” Eva said. The word was gentle, but it sat on the table between them like something fragile and sharp. “I was… I was scared, you know. For you. And then you stopped answering my calls. I thought you’d gone back to him. That I’d pushed too hard. That I’d—” She shook her head once. “By the time you messaged, it was months later. And it was… one line. ‘I’m okay.’ And you didn’t say where you were. I didn’t know what to do with that.” Aurora looked down at her own hands, the calloused fingers, the small pale crescent on her left wrist like a repaired crack in porcelain. “I didn’t know either,” she said. “I went home. For a bit. To Cardiff.” “With your parents?” Eva’s voice softened. “For a bit.” Her father’s disappointment had been a quiet, pervasive thing, heavier than any shouted anger. Her mother’s fretful hovering, the constant suggestion of “just talk to Evan, love” as if it were that simple. The feeling of being fifteen again and sullen. “Then London again. Different couch. Different job. Silas.” She glanced back towards the bar. Silas, though pretending to have his attention on the IPA foam and the wine glass, had a way of listening without appearing to. “You could have come back,” Eva said. “To mine. I mean, in theory. Dan and I were—” She hesitated. “Actually, no, that’s not fair. We didn’t have the space. We barely had space for each other.” She huffed out a dry laugh. “It’s funny. I spent years trying to get out of Cardiff, to be this person who could stand in rooms with men in suits and not feel like I’d stolen someone else’s badge. And then when you needed… more, I didn’t have anything left in me to give.” Aurora thought of the weeks in Eva’s Finsbury flat, both of them living off toast and cheap coffee, Eva coming home with ink on her fingers and case law in her eyes. The way her brain had hummed with other people’s conflicts while Aurora sat on the sofa scrolling through listings for studio flats she couldn’t afford. “You did more than enough,” Aurora said. “You answered the phone.” “Not always.” “You answered it when it mattered,” Aurora said, the words coming out low. “The night with the hospital. The police. You sat in that little plastic chair by my bed for six hours while I threw up and cried and refused to report him.” Eva’s knuckles went white around her own glass. “Don’t,” she said softly. “Please.” Aurora shut her mouth. The argument in the far corner of the bar had cooled into a brittle, tired silence. One of the regulars had put his head down on the table, sleeping off his last pint. “I still think about that night,” Eva said, staring at the wine she hadn’t yet drunk. “Sometimes when I’m in court, or in a meeting, or even just on the Tube. That nurse asking me if I was her sister and me saying yes without even thinking. Like it would make it easier if we were related. Like it gave me some right to be there. Then you going back.” She met Aurora’s eyes, guilt and something steelier in her gaze. “I took it personally. Which was stupid. It wasn’t about me. But I did. I thought… if even that wasn’t enough to make you leave him, what am I even doing? What good am I?” “And then you stopped calling,” Aurora said. Eva flinched, just slightly. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I did. I told myself you’d made your choice. That I had to focus on my exams, on my own life, otherwise I’d drown in yours. I told myself I’d tried. I told myself a lot of things.” The truth of it landed between them with a quiet, painful clarity. There were versions of that time where they had done things differently, where they had clung to each other harder, but none of them were this one. “I left him,” Aurora said. “In the end.” “I know,” Eva replied immediately. Then seemed to realize how that sounded. “I mean, I don’t— I mean, obviously I didn’t know know. I…” She broke off, frustrated. Aurora tilted her head. “You… what?” “I checked,” Eva said, flushing then, the colour rising along her neck. “On social media. Mutual friends. I didn’t have you anymore, but I still had… bits. People. I knew when you quit pre-law. When you moved back to London. I saw your name tagged at some bar and thought, oh, she’s here, she’s alive, she’s…” She gave a small, embarrassed shrug. “I kept tabs, I guess. From a distance. It’s pathetic.” “It’s very… you,” Aurora said slowly. “Research.” The idea of Eva tracking her like a file she couldn’t quite close did something strange to her chest. Eva stared at her wineglass. “I wanted to call. So many times,” she said quietly. “But the longer it went, the stranger it felt. Like… if I rang you after three months, I’d have to explain why I hadn’t rung sooner. After a year, even more. It just… grew. This… silence. And then you become someone I used to know, and I become someone who abandoned you, and it’s easier to stay… theoretical. You in my head are nicer than the idea of you actually picking up and saying ‘why now?’” “Why now?” Aurora asked. Eva let out a breath that was part laugh, part exhale of years. “Because I walked into a bar and you were standing behind the counter.” “Small world,” Aurora said. “Horribly small,” Eva agreed. They both looked out at the rain again. It had eased into a fine mist, the kind that soaked you annoyingly without ever just getting it over with. Aurora could see their distorted reflections in the window—two young women rendered ghostly and imprecise by the glass and the night. “You’ve changed more than your hair,” Eva said, catching Aurora’s gaze in the reflection. “You’re… calmer. Or maybe just… I don’t know. Harder?” “I deliver noodles for a living,” Aurora said. “And pour drinks for men who tell me about their divorces. You grow a shell or you drown.” “I always thought you’d be the lawyer,” Eva said. “You were the one who could argue me under the table. I’d get worked up and you’d just… cut through it.” “I was good at exams. That’s not the same thing.” The old embarrassment stirred, the feeling of dropping out of a life other people had seen laid out for her. “Pre-Law was… my dad’s idea, anyway.” “He must have been thrilled,” Eva said wryly. “He hasn’t spoken to me in two years,” Aurora replied. Eva winced. “I’m sorry.” “Everyone’s sorry,” Aurora said, more weary than bitter. “It doesn’t really change the maths.” “How is your mum?” Eva asked after a beat. “Teaching. Worrying. Making more stew than any two people can eat.” Aurora swallowed. “She asks after you, sometimes.” “Does she?” Eva’s eyes went shiny for a moment. “I send Christmas cards. I never know what to write in them besides ‘hope you’re well.’” “She keeps them, you know.” Aurora thought of the shoebox under her mother’s bed. Birth certificates, old letters, holiday snaps, Eva’s careful, slanted handwriting on glossy cards with robins or cartoon reindeer. “She’s sentimental.” Eva smiled, then. Properly, for the first time that evening. It loosened something in Aurora’s chest she hadn’t realized was clenched. “Drink?” Aurora asked. “On the house. Occupational hazard.” She echoed Eva’s words deliberately, lightening the air between them by an inch. “I shouldn’t,” Eva said automatically, glancing back at her colleagues. “We’re just having the one. Early start tomorrow. Client meeting at eight, partner breathing down my neck, you know how it is.” “I don’t,” Aurora said, and watched Eva register that, the way her life had cleaved from Aurora’s along a line as sharp as the edge of this table. “Right,” Eva said. “Of course you don’t. That was… that was a stupid thing to say.” “It wasn’t,” Aurora said. “It’s just not mine.” Silence settled again, not as prickly this time. Silas’s voice drifted over from the bar, low and dry as he bantered with Eva’s colleagues about the beer selection. He moved with that slight, disguised limp, the signet ring catching the light as he set down glasses. “Do you ever—” Eva began, then stopped, aborting the question with a shake of her head. “Ever what?” Aurora asked. “Think about… if?” Eva said. “If you’d stayed. If I’d… tried harder. If we’d— I don’t know. Been braver. Less… afraid of making a mess of each other’s lives.” “All the time,” Aurora said, surprising herself with the ease of the admission. For years she’d shoved that question down, weighted it with work and sleep and the routines of survival. “Then I remember we did make a mess. We were twenty and held together with caffeine and trauma. We did the best we could with what we had.” “It wasn’t enough,” Eva said. “It was what it was,” Aurora replied. “We’re both still here. That’s something.” Eva looked at her for a long moment, really looked, like she was trying to reconcile the girl she’d known with the woman standing opposite her. Aurora wondered what particular ghosts she saw overlaying her now—Laila at fifteen, smelling of chlorine and cheap shampoo; Laila at twenty-one in a borrowed dress at some party; Laila on a hospital bed stubbornly refusing to cry. “You’re right,” Eva said finally. “We are still here.” “Oi, Carter,” Silas called from behind the bar, his tone casual but not unkind. “Your adoring public demand more crisps. And my knee’s had enough tonight.” Aurora huffed out a breath. “Duty calls.” “Martin’s got a wife and kids in Clapham, you know,” Eva said, nodding towards the colleague in the navy suit. “Careful with ‘adoring public.’” “They all have wives and kids in Clapham,” Aurora said, deadpan. Eva snorted. “Can we…?” Eva broke off, dug in her bag, pulled out a card, then seemed to think better of it. “No, that’s stupid. You’ll never call.” “Try me,” Aurora said. Eva hesitated, then scribbled a mobile number on the back with a surprisingly cheap blue biro. The ink blotted a little on the glossy surface. She slid it across the table like they were back in their GCSE exams, passing notes behind the invigilator’s back. “I know it doesn’t fix five years,” Eva said. “I’m not… It’s not some grand gesture. But if you ever… if you need… or if you just want to sit in a park and complain about the Tories…” Her mouth quirked. “You don’t have to answer. You don’t owe me anything.” Aurora took the card. It felt disproportionally heavy for its size. “We’ll see,” she said, which was as much as she could give without lying. Eva nodded once, accepting that. “Rory?” she said as Aurora turned to go. “Yeah?” “I am… glad you’re okay,” Eva said. “Inasmuch as anyone is, you know. In this world.” Aurora thought of scooter engines, of spring rain on her face at midnight, of the way Silas left her a mug of tea outside her door on mornings after particularly late shifts. Of all the small, unglamorous ways people stayed alive. “I’m… doing,” Aurora said. “That’s closer to the truth.” Then, because it felt suddenly important, she added, “I’m glad you’re… doing too.” Eva’s smile this time was crooked, complicated. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.” Aurora went back behind the bar, the familiar weight of the apron settling around her waist like armour. She slid the business card into the back pocket of her jeans without looking at it again. Silas raised an eyebrow as she reached for the crisp crates. “Old friend?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know. “Something like that,” Aurora said. “Time makes strangers of us all,” he said philosophically, then shook his head at himself. “Listen to me, going full fortune cookie. You all right?” “I’m fine,” Aurora said, then caught herself. “I will be.” He regarded her for a moment, those hazel eyes sharp and kind. His hand, with its silver ring, tapped once on the bar. “Good enough,” he said. Across the room, Eva laughed at something her colleague said, head tipped back, the sound bright and a little forced. She touched her ring as she spoke. For just a second, her gaze skated over the bar to where Aurora stood, and their eyes met. They shared a small, wry smile that acknowledged everything and promised nothing. The moment passed. The rain outside started up again, soft and insistent, washing the neon sign into a smear of green light. Inside The Raven’s Nest, glasses clinked, low voices threaded through the dimness, and Aurora moved through the familiar rituals of her night, the weight of a small white card pressing warm against the back of her leg like a future she hadn’t yet decided on.